Initiative for U.S.-China Dialogue on Global Issues

James Green: Welcome to the U.S.-China Dialogue Podcast from Georgetown University.

This podcast series explores diplomacy and dialogue between China and the United States during the four decades since normalization of relations in 1979.We'll hear from former ambassadors, Cabinet secretaries, and White House advisors who will share how they shaped the course of the most complex relationship in international diplomacy today.

I'm your host, James Green. Today on the podcast, we talk with Robert Einhorn.

One of the main reasons I wanted to create this podcast series was to highlight the work of senior and mid-level officials who clocked thousands of flight miles and hundreds of hours negotiating with Chinese counterparts. Bob Einhorn is the perfect exemplar of such an official.

Einhorn spent his career in the United States Government on the extremely technical and nettlesome issues of arms control and nonproliferation. In the foreign and defense policy communities, there is general agreement that nuclear, chemical, and biological weapons and their missile delivery systems—that is, WMD—are so destructive and destabilizing that their technologies need to be strictly controlled by international agreements.

Unfortunately, the China that emerged in the late 1970s from the ravages of Maoist doctrine and the Cultural Revolution was not particularly concerned with Western concepts of arms control, security, or nonproliferation. Through much of the 1990s, Bob Einhorn at the State Department and his colleague Gary Samore at the White House spent those hundreds of hours with Chinese counterparts blocking specific technology transfers to rogue regimes like Syria, Libya, Iran, and North Korea. In the process, the Chinese leadership slowly changed the nation's policies and signed up to international nonproliferation agreements and norms. This Chinese change in policy made the U.S. and the world more safe and secure.

At the end of the 1990s, India and Pakistan dramatically the risk of war with tit-for-tat nuclear tests, the crossing of a dangerous threshold for these new members of the nuclear club. Here's President Clinton at the time:

President Clinton (audio): So, again I ask India to halt its nuclear weapons program and join the 149 other nations that have already signed the Comprehensive Test-Ban Treaty. And I ask Pakistan to exercise restraint to avoid a perilous nuclear arms race.

James Green: The big question for the region and the world was: would China used its newfound appreciation for the global nonproliferation regime to help calm tensions in South Asia?

In his discussion with me, Einhorn talks about his efforts to limit dangerous WMD technology, about his nickname in China, and about China's role in the 1998 South Asia nuclear standoff.

Bob Einhorn, thanks so much for making time. I wanted to start with your background, your career. You've got your master's from the Woodrow Wilson School at Princeton and then you started to work on this thing called arms control. Could you just explain at that time why in the 1970s that was an important issue to work on, and how you ended up going to the Arms Control Disarming Agency, or ACDA, as it was known?

Robert Einhorn: Well, it was somewhat serendipitous because at the Woodrow Wilson School my roommate was a Canadian whose father was head of the disarmament division at the UN Secretariat in New York. Because of anti-nepotism rules, he couldn't hire his son, but he could hire his son's roommate. So, I went to work at the UN in New York. I was there for only sixteen months. One of my bosses was a Russian Undersecretary General who liked to harass the American on his staff by providing only thirty-day contracts. And he would wait till the twenty-ninth day to renew.

So, this was not very good. But in the course of my work in New York, I met American diplomats who came up to New York for various meetings. One of them was James Leonard. Ambassador James Leonard of the Arms Control and Disarmament Agency at the time. And he brought me down to Washington to work there. I started there in '72 and I worked at the Arms Control and Disarmament Agency for about fourteen years till about 1986.

James Green: I'd love to hear about that work. But would you say you learned something from your Russian superior about negotiating strategy by only turning over contracts at the last moment?

Robert Einhorn: Well, I learned that this was a time when détente was beginning to break out between United States and the Soviet Union in the real world. But it hadn't broken out within the UN Secretariat. The Russians enjoyed harassing Americans on the staff. It was also kind of a nest of spies for the Russians. I mean, they put a lot of KGB officers into there, into the UN Secretariat. You can tell the KGB officers. They were the ones who would take breaks. And they would walk together whispering down the corridors. They assumed that all of their offices were bugged. And so, they would engage in conversations only during corridor walks. I learned these essentials when I was at the UN.

James Green: Did they also drive nicer cars and wear nicer clothes?

Robert Einhorn: I didn't follow them outside the office, so I couldn't testify to that.

James Green: So, you came to the Arms Control Disarmament Agency. Talk a little bit about that time about what U.S. policy was and why arms control was important in the context of détente.

Robert Einhorn: Well, this was a time when the SAL Talks were underway. The Strategic Arms Limitation Talks between the United States and Soviet Union. There was a dawning recognition—and this of course was after the Cuban Missile Crisis—that we needed to stabilize this strategic relationship. That simply piling more arms on top of the last batch was not strengthening our security. That mutual and verifiable limitations on strategic arms could be in the security interests of both sides. This was becoming a growing conventional wisdom. Henry Kissinger was a strong proponent of this, and he was the main architect.

James Green: And when you say strategic arms, just so we're clear, you're talking about nuclear weapons and the missile delivery systems?

Robert Einhorn: Yes. Nuclear weapons and the U.S. and Soviet triads. These were intercontinental-ranged ballistic missiles, submarine-based ballistic missiles, and heavy bombers.

James Green: Thanks. So, at your time, what were you working on? What did you start working on? What unnatural acts did you begin to do?

Robert Einhorn: Well, I in my time at ACDA, I worked on all of the issues. I started off on multilateral arms control. I was head of Geneva Committee. It was at that time, a twenty-five-nation committee. It's expanded since then. It had just negotiated the Biological Weapons Convention. I was there for the negotiation of the little-known Environmental Modification Convention.

But it's worked on chemical weapons, arms control, the Comprehensive Test-Ban. The multilateral. I did that for a number of years. Then I shifted to nonproliferation at ACDA from '78 to late '79. There were trilateral comprehensive test-ban treaty negotiations. The United States, the Soviet Union, and the United Kingdom. I worked on that. That didn't succeed in getting a treaty that came a couple of decades later.

And then in the 1980s I started working on strategic arms control, arms reductions, the STAR talks. INF. The Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Agreement, which doesn't have a very good future at the present time.

So, I worked on all of these things. And in 1986, I moved from the Arms Control Disarmament Agency to the State Department and I was a member of the State Department Policy Planning staff for about six years.

James Green: Right, and also looking at these sorts of issues of arms control, arms limitation and nonproliferation. Could you disentangle those two or, or discuss how one prepares for the other?

Robert Einhorn: Well, arms control has to do with existing arms. Either trying to establish certain limitations or reductions in existing nuclear arms. Or it doesn't have to be nuclear; the Chemical Weapons Convention abolished all chemical weapons, or at least tried to. Whereas nonproliferation has to do with the spread of capabilities, the spread to additional countries. Whether it's nuclear nonproliferation, which is now governed largely by the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, chemical weapons, also it has a both a disarmament dimension and a nonproliferation dimension to chemical weapons and so forth.

But basically, that's the divide. Nonproliferation has to do with the spread of capability. Arms control and disarmament deals with limitation and reduction of existing capability.

James Green: So, you had mentioned your move from the Arms Control Disarmament Agency to the State Department in the 1980s. At that time, working at State, how much of your time was spent dealing with the Soviet Union, or dealing with the Allied countries, or dealing with countries like China?

Robert Einhorn: Well, in the 80s, I spent a lot of time dealing with the Soviet Union. There was still, the East-West competition was still a central strategic matter for the United States. So that was critical. But in dealing with the Soviet Union, you also had to deal with your allies. When I was involved in the INF treaty matters, it had to do with NATO and NATO capabilities. So, you were constantly consulting with your NATO allies.

James Green: And where did China, or didn't China figure really into any of this? I mean the East-West rivalry was in the areas you were talking about largely, U.S.-Soviet Union and tending to allies. And that relationship, China has had nuclear weapons for four decades now. How did they figure into your discussions at that time in the '80s?

Robert Einhorn: Well, in the '80s, they didn't figure very much. Rhetorically, they didn't even support nonproliferation. Their position, rhetorically, was to support proliferation. They actually said that. Proliferation was gonna break the hegemony of the superpower, so that was a good thing. And China if you ask China, were they prepared to limit or reduce their own nuclear capabilities, they'd tell you to go jump in the lake. Here, the superpowers, the United States and Soviet Union, had tens of thousands of nuclear weapons. They were just a beginner in comparison. And they said that they weren't ready to restrain their own capabilities.

So, China was not very much a factor in arms control thinking at that time. Although obviously the United States Government monitored it very carefully the progress they were making in their nuclear capabilities.

James Green: Right. So, where China is on this nonproliferation arc, I think you described it quite well in the 1980s, they signed the Chemical Weapons Convention I wanna say in '93? '94?

Robert Einhorn: The early '90s they really made the turn. '92 they joined the Non-Proliferation Treaty. They recognized that they had to begin to establish a position of greater respectability in an international system. In part to live down the reputational hit they took at Tiananmen. And they began to recognize the importance of some of these international norms, whether it's in trade or nonproliferation. And they actively became interested in learning about these international conventions and joining them. And the NPT was I think the critical one.

James Green: And the NPT, Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, what's the basis of it? What's the kind of core of it that you think attracted the Chinese to it? And what are the obligations of it?

Robert Einhorn: Well, the Chinese made quite a turn around. I mentioned earlier that they in the '70s and part of the '80s actually supported proliferation. They came around to the view that nonproliferation was in their interest. They were one of the five recognized nuclear weapons states. And they understood that not having other nuclear arms trades around their periphery was good for their security. So, they began to internalize this notion that a world of many nuclear weapons states was not a world China would feel comfortable living in. And so, they began to internalize these nonproliferation norms.

James Green: I wanna get to some of the nuclear nonproliferation issues. But before that, I'd be curious to hear your telling of a rather well-known chemical weapons-related event, which was the Yinhe 银河 Incident. I presume, at that time, you were at State.

Robert Einhorn: I was State. I was a Deputy Assistant Secretary at the Political Military Bureau. I could speak for a long time on this subject. I'll give you an anecdote. We had information from our intelligence community that a shipment of chemical-related goods were onboard a Chinese vessel called the Yinhe 银河. We démarche the Chinese government. We went to the Chinese Government and said, "We have reliable information that these chemicals are onboard this ship and they're destined to Iran's chemical weapon program." The Chinese said they would look into this charge.

I got a call. It was a Saturday morning; I was at home. From Ambassador Stapleton Roy, Stape Roy, who said "Bob, I was just called into the Foreign Ministry. They said they looked into the matter. And the goods that we alleged are onboard that ship are not onboard that ship. They are prepared to have Americans board that ship and determine for themselves that the goods are not onboard."

Ambassador Roy said to me, "Bob, you know what that means?" I said, "What does that mean, Stape?" He said, “It means the goods are not onboard. That means we should drop this matter." Anyway, it's a long story that goes on with this. The intelligence community was confident that the goods were onboard. We went through an agonizing process of having inspectors board the ship at a Saudi port in the Persian Gulf.

James Green: This was after the ship left China?

Robert Einhorn: The ship left China. It got to a port in Iran, I think it was. We had Americans take a look. They searched it. It took ‘em days, and days, and days. And this was not a small ship. It was a huge container ship. And sure enough, the goods were not there. It was egg on our face. Later, we found out, we did a post mortem, and we found out the goods never made it onboard. I'll tell a secret.

What happened was the intelligence community gold hold of the manifest, the ship's manifest, and saw the goods were listed there and assumed with 100% confidence that they were there. When we did the post mortem, we went to companies involved in merchant shipping and so forth. And they thought it was hysterical that we relied on this manifest-

James Green: Why is that?

Robert Einhorn: …to give us proof. Because often goods are listed on manifests, they never arrive and, and so forth. And they're rarely an accurate reflection of all the cargo onboard. We later found out, our intelligence community determined that the goods were destined for the Yinhe 银河, but they didn't arrive on time.

So, that's what happened. It was egg on our face. And for several years after that, every time I went to the Chinese with some accusation about what they were doing, could they investigate, they would say, "Remember the Yinhe 银河."

James Green: So, let's go to those interactions in which the Chinese would bring this up. Maybe starting in the mid 1990s, the Chinese and Pakistani weapons cooperation became quite- it'd been robust for many years.

And it came to the attention of the United States that this is something that was dangerous. Could you talk a little bit about your role in trying to address the PRC-Pakistan weapons relationship and what the U.S.'s goals were in trying to address it?

Robert Einhorn: The Chinese-Pakistani relationship was very strong. It had been for a long time. In fact, before China joined the NPT, it had provided Pakistan enough highly enriched Uranium to build two nuclear weapons. It also provided designs of a nuclear weapon to Pakistan. These would've been clear-cut violations of the NPT had China been a member of the NPT at the time. So, the relationship was very strong. It was strategic.

We got information that China had provided Pakistan a ballistic missile, short range missiles. M-11s. And we raised this with the Chinese. And they initially denied it. And then they had to recognize that we had pretty good information. We-

James Green: And when you said this was raised, this was at an ambassador level? This was their ambassador here? Or it was in Beijing-

Robert Einhorn: Well, it was raised at the foreign ministry level from our embassy. I would raise it with Chinese officials in Washington. And then it got elevated to the ministerial level, with Warren Christopher raising it with his counterpart. This became very contentious. We ended up sanctioning China, imposing sanctions on China. But there were two levels of sanctions. There were lower and a much more severe level. We, I think, were prepared to give the Chinese a bit of a pass. We sanctioned them for the lesser offense and the sanctions were less severe.

And we did that because first of all we knew that any imposition of sanctions would affect China. They didn't like the reputational hit they took with any sanctions. And they would perhaps, these sanctions would give us a lever to get better Chinese behavior. And I think it did. the information we had was that the initial transfer was of thirty-four missiles and that the plan was to transfer well over ninety missiles. And we negotiated with them, and basically, we said, "We'll drop the sanctions we have imposed, if you provide no more full ground to ground missiles." And they agreed.

And so, we think what we achieved in that is that the supply was cut off at thirty-four and didn't go to the full amount. Now, the administration was heavily criticized for this-

James Green: For accepting-

Robert Einhorn: For accepting this deal. I mean they thought, "First of all, we should've imposed much more draconian sanctions in the first place. And why were we relieving China of these sanctions? Simply because they agreed to do no more." Anyway, we thought it was a pragmatic solution, but the administration was heavily criticized, nonetheless.

James Green: So, moving from that to also with Pakistan to ring magnets and the role that played in the bilateral U.S.-China, but also in the relationship that China had with Pakistan. Why was that important? And what was the kind of goal there?

Robert Einhorn: Well, what happened was a Chinese company provided ring magnets. They're just what they sound like. They're circular magnets that they were used in uranium enrichment centrifuges in Pakistan's nuclear weapons program. It was not a huge- ring magnets. They're magnets, they're not terribly sophisticated technology. But they're useful in this process.

James Green: And enriching uranium, just to be clear, to make fissile material for nuclear weapons.

Robert Einhorn: Yeah, it spins natural uranium to the point where the uranium could be used in a nuclear weapon. It turns out this transaction was only worth $70,000 which is chicken feet in the world of nuclear weapons proliferation. But we had good information of who sold it and where it went.

And so, this became a very controversial question between us and the Chinese. This was raised at the highest levels. And it resulted in the imposition of pretty strong sanctions. The United States cut off China from export-import bank loans for about three months. And this really shocked the Chinese.

If you remember in '96, there was a dust up between U.S. and China over Taiwan. Elections in Taiwan. The Chinese fired ballistic missiles around the island. The United States sent two carrier task forces to the Taiwan Strait. It was a very tense situation. And then in the middle of this tense situation, I went to Beijing to try to resolve the ring magnet crisis. It was not the right political environment to solve this.

But eventually we managed, I think by '96, we managed to get a commitment from the Chinese that they would not make any transfers to un-safeguarded nuclear facilities in Pakistan or anywhere else. Un-safeguarded means that they were not subject to verification, monitoring by the International Atomic Energy Agency.

So again, this was controversial. but we had pretty reliable information. I won't disclose how we had this information, but we had pretty reliable information that this $70,000 was not blessed by central authorities in Beijing; they didn't even know about it. This was just an organization, a company in China that had established a relationship with the Pakistanis. They continued to make transfers like this, and we think that actually the controversy surrounded the ring magnets had a very salutary effect. Because it heightened Beijing authorities’ consciousness that if these entities around China made these irresponsible transfers without central authority's knowledge, then this could redound to the disadvantage of China. And it gave them incentive to clamp down more, to exercise greater control over all of these commercial entities in China.

James Green: You had mentioned when you went there, it was not a great time because of broader U.S.-China frictions. Could you just give a flavor of what that visit was like? I seem to remember a lot of lectures earlier on, probably in the early '90s of how the U.S. sold weapons to Taiwan. And so, China should be able to sell whatever it wants to whomever it wants. Could you just describe what a kind of tough negotiation session feels like with China when you show up there? And you're not particularly welcome?

Robert Einhorn: Well, it's funny you say I wasn't particularly welcome. The Chinese had a name for me – 牙医 yayi. My pronunciation probably isn't right.

James Green: It's perfect.

Robert Einhorn: But it means, “The Dentist.” The reason they call me The Dentist was that I was going there constantly. I was averaging about six trips to China each year to essentially accuse them of making irresponsible technology transfers to countries. And I would share with them information that we had. It was quite accusatory. They didn't like it. They especially didn't like it when they found out that our accusations were accurate. In fact, this was happening.

Sometimes our meetings were pretty confrontational. And we dealt mostly with the Foreign Ministry.

James Green: Why do you think the Foreign Ministry...sorry to cut you off, because I want to hear the context of it. Why do you think the Foreign Ministry agreed to take the meetings if it was so unpleasant for them, like going to the dentist?

Robert Einhorn: Well, often they didn't agree to take the meetings. We would press them to schedule a meeting and they would be very reluctant. But also, the Chinese, they wanted a better relationship with the United States. They knew that it was the United States that could confer on them a kind of legitimacy in this area of nonproliferation and so forth.

So eventually, they had to accept a visit from the dentist. And they did. But they could be quite confrontational. And often I would I would go there, I would make a presentation about information we had that China was making this irresponsible transfer, and then I would await a response. But instead of getting a response to my concern, they would take the floor and say, "Mr. Einhorn, you've raised what you consider to be a nonproliferation concern to the United States. Now, I wanna raise a nonproliferation concern to China. And that is your irresponsible sale of arms to Taiwan. A province of China."

And you know often this would be almost a filibuster. They could speak for an hour, an hour and a half on the history of the Taiwan problem and why the United States was violating its commitments by continuing to sell arms to Taiwan. So, it got pretty contentious. And often when we would provide information to the Chinese, we had gotten clearance from the U.S. Intelligence Community to provide this information. Sometimes we didn't; the Intelligence Community would not want to divulge too much to the Chinese for fear of losing the source of the information. Whether it was a human source or a technical source and so forth.

But we would provide this information. And often the Chinese would say without even looking into it, “this is groundless, baseless. This is just intended to smear China and its export control system and so forth."

James Green: So, that was their going-in negotiating position-

Robert Einhorn: That was their default opening position. And then sometimes we get different kinds of responses. Often after you know one week, four weeks, or so forth. Sometimes we never got a response whatsoever. But sometimes they would say, "We looked into this, and your information was not specific enough for us to conduct a serious investigation. So, we're sorry." Or, they'd say, "We looked into this, and we found that your information was totally baseless."

But every once in a while, they'd say, "We looked into this. Your information was accurate and we have an notified the Chinese entity that it should not go forward with this transaction." So, it was kind of a mixed a mixed bag. You had to keep at it.

And sometimes over lunch or something like that the Chinese Foreign Ministry officials would confide in us and say, "Look. You've put us in a very difficult situation. We the Foreign Ministry people, we're not responsible for any transactions like this. And you ask us to go to the organizations that were involved in the transaction. And accuse them of something and they don't wanna be receptive. They accuse us of being on the American side. So, please come to us as infrequently as possible cause you put us in a very awkward situation."

I remember there was one particular official, I won't name him in this interview, whom I dealt with for a number of years. A very you know, self-confident cantankerous kind of guy. And we were together. It was some kind of a track, 1.5, Track II meeting in Hawaii. And we were there having a beer. And he says, "You know Bob, when you would provide us this information and we would come back to you and saw, we looked into it as baseless, I can tell you that many of the times it was accurate information. But I was told by another agency that I couldn't convey that to you, that I had to tell you that was baseless. But actually, much of your information was accurate."

James Green: So, some of the meetings were performance art on the Chinese government side. They could present a strong face to the foreigner who was coming in. But they themselves actually knew what was truthful.

Robert Einhorn: Yeah, I mean sometimes we didn't provide them enough information for them to investigate. I mean, our intelligence community would give us the bare minimum. So, we'd go to the Chinese, and we'd say, "we understand there's a sensitive shipment that's leaving Shanghai on Tuesday going to Iran. Could you look into this?" And they would say, "How in the world are we gonna look into it with that little information?"

James Green: One of the largest container points of the world, sure.

Robert Einhorn: But I think the Foreign Ministry tried its best to look into our concerns.

James Green: So, moving from the mid '90s to a few years later. Jiang Zemin was coming here in 1997 as really a way to elevate the U.S.-China relationship. First visit since the Tiananmen crackdown of a Chinese leader and making sure that visit went well was extremely important. And nonproliferation in Chinese views and policies towards it were important as well. Can you talk how you get from The Dentist and this contentious relationship to how you used a presidential visit to really advance U.S. policy?

Robert Einhorn: Well, the visit was scheduled for I believe it was October '97. About six months before, in early '97, I was called to a White House meeting with a number of people in the trade area, across the board working on China. And we were told that there's gonna be this summit. And the president, President Clinton, wanted to make this a success. And there were a number of important negotiations that had to take place between then and the summit to get a number of agreements, which could be announced at the time of the summit.

So, we were given our marching orders to work on this, see what we could do. One by one, these prospective agreements fell away. Till in September only the negotiation I was involved in was left as a potential deliverable for the summit. And let me briefly explain what it was about.

In 1985, the United States and China negotiated an agreement for civil nuclear cooperation which would allow the United States to sell reactors to China. But soon thereafter, it was found that China was engaging very irresponsible transfers to Pakistan. The U.S. Congress passed a new law that said the executive cannot implement this agreement for cooperation with China until the President can make certain certifications including that China was not engaged in proliferation related activity. And we could not make that certification for a number of years.

Robert Einhorn: So, the negotiation I was involved in was designed to get certain nonproliferation commitments from China that would enable President Clinton to make this certification and enable American companies like Westinghouse to sell reactors to China. So that was the negotiation. And we were asking the Chinese to do a number of things including to completely cut off any nuclear cooperation with Iran, which was becoming a big problem. To adopt a very effective export control system. It's called the Zangger Committee. It was a nuclear nonproliferation export committee. And a number of other things.

So, we're engaged in this discussion for about six months and we're making some progress. But when September came, we had about a month left and the White House was on our back to get this going. No, we were also under pressure from industry. Westinghouse wanted to be able to sell reactors to what they saw as a huge China nuclear market.

And so, we were under the gun. And I remember the month of September was quite a month. This was my schedule. I would get on a plane with my delegation on a Saturday. We'd arrive in Beijing on Sunday. We'd negotiate Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday. Thursday, we'd get back on a plane, go back to Washington. Friday, we'd have an interagency meeting, what we had accomplished, what our instructions are for the next week. Saturday, we get back on the plane.

So, I did this three weeks in a row. My delegation and I did this three weeks in a row. And at the end of it, I just couldn't sleep. I went to the doctor. He said "I'll give you the nontechnical word for it. Your body clock is broken." But notwithstanding the sacrifice to my sleep, we managed to work out a deal with the with the Chinese. They agreed not to engage in any new nuclear cooperation with Iran. They agreed to phase out two relatively small existing projects within a short period of time.

James Green: Civilian nuclear projects?

Robert Einhorn: Civilian nuclear projects. And the Chinese did a lot by the way. I mean the Iranians wanted a reactor that was optimized for the production of plutonium. The Chinese canceled that. The Chinese had plans to build two nuclear reactors in Iran. They canceled those. They had already transferred, unfortunately, blueprints for a uranium conversion facility. This is a facility to take kind of rough uranium, yellow cake, and convert it into uranium gas to be used in centrifuges.

When the Chinese reached an agreement with us, the cut the Iranians off. But they had already, unfortunately, transferred blueprints. And the Iranians were able to turn those blueprints into a factory. But we know the Chinese cut them off, because we found out the Iranians later sued them for the breach of contract. And this became a contentious issue between China and Iran. But it confirmed for us that the Chinese were serious about cutting Iran off.

Anyway, so we reached this agreement. It was announced at the Clinton-Jiang Zemin summit meeting. And U.S. industry was free then to compete for the sale of nuclear reactors.

James Green: So, looking back over those very intense months and weeks, what do you think the, the U.S. got right and what do you think motivated China to come to the table and meet what were U.S. security requirements requests?

Robert Einhorn: There were a number of incentives the Chinese had. One, they wanted a successful summit. As you mentioned, this is their first visit of a Chinese leader in a long, long time. The first summit of this type. This was China on the world stage. And they wanted to make it successful. But also, there was a commercial incentive also. The Chinese wanted to rely more and more heavily on nuclear energy, nuclear power. And they really believed that the American nuclear industry had the best products. They very much wanted to cooperate with American nuclear industry. And this was essential to allow that to happen.

One of the things we did, our delegation, we would meet with Chinese nuclear energy officials, who really had a stake in getting an agreement that would permit cooperation with U.S. nuclear industry. And we think that they became an important lobbying force on our behalf essentially within the Chinese system. They were, we believe, they said to the Chinese central authorities, "Look, can you give these commitments to the Americans? It would open up the opportunity for beneficial nuclear cooperation with the United States."

James Green: And then President Clinton reciprocated by going to China the following year, 1998, and I think I was saying both of those times, I was working down at the NFC, and kind of working on the back end of making some of those things happen. What was the nonproliferation agenda the subsequent years that you guys were working on?

Robert Einhorn: Well, part of it was implementation of the earlier agreements. And with the Chinese, it's not a straight-line progress all the way. There is I used to say two steps forward, one step back. Sometimes it was one step forward, two steps back. We made progress, but then there were occasions of serious recidivism with the Chinese.

Sometimes they make a commitment, and then you get information that raises questions about whether they were honoring it. And we had these kinds of questions, both with respect to Pakistan and with respect to Iran. And also, North Korea was an important factor also. And so, after Jiang Zemin-Clinton summit, it wasn't all, “we've solved this problem.” It was a recurring problem, and this was constantly part of it.

But in May '98 you had the Indian and Pakistani nuclear weapons tests.

James Green: Can you just talk from your lifetime of experience of working on arms control and nonproliferation, what a huge moment that was for the nonproliferation community to have these two breakout nuclear powers actually test their devices in a very public way?

Robert Einhorn: This was a huge setback. I mean, it was not as if it came as a huge surprise. I mean the Indians conducted a nuclear explosion in 1974. They called it a “peaceful nuclear explosion.” That's a kind of funny term. It's a nuclear weapon test that they said would be put to peaceful use. It never was, of course.

And then this Indian test lead to an acceleration of a Pakistani program. And they were pursuing this in a very rigorous way. They hadn't conducted any tests. But then the Indians decided with the Hindu Nationalist Party, the BJP in power, that they were gonna finally go forward and have an overt nuclear weapons program. And they conducted this test in May. It actually was five tests in May '98.

Unfortunately, followed about two weeks later by Pakistani tests. They actually tested six devices. Five to have parity with India's May tests. And one to offset the 1974 test. And so, both India and Pakistan, these rivals which had fought three wars, they were they were now engaged in an overt nuclear arms competition. And the United States wanted to do what we could to kind of, ensure that this would be a very restrained competition, if not stopped altogether.

And it turns out that one of our closest allies, in wanting to achieve a more restrained stabled situation, was China. And I remember very well a few days after the test, there was gonna be a foreign ministers meeting of the P5. The five permanent members of the Security Council. This was gonna be in in Geneva. Madeleine Albright was the U.S. Secretary of State at the time and I was sent over to negotiate a communique with my P5 counterparts.

It turns out my Chinese c-counterpart was my main interlocutor. We essentially drafted the statement-

James Green: The two of you together.

Robert Einhorn: And then sold it to the to the others. The ministers the next day came in. We stayed up all night. But the next day, the ministers came in and they, they agreed to this statement. And then about a week or so later there was a meeting in New York of the U.N. Security Council. And they adopted, I think it was Resolution 1172, if I'm not mistaken. And there, too, the United States and China worked very closely together.

James Green: So, what would you say, I mean I'm sure working up all night with your Chinese counterpart wasn't high up your greatest things to do. But, what do you think incentivized Foreign Ministry and the Chinese leadership to really work on this issue in a way that, while it might've been personally kind of very painful to spend all this time on it, but for the policy ends was incredibly worthwhile in the interests of the U.S. security?

Robert Einhorn: Well, China didn't want India to become a nuclear power rival and very much wanted to constrain India's capability. It was less concerned about Pakistan, which China felt was a a strong ally. But it wanted to damp down this competition for fear that it could lead to a competition with India in the nuclear area.

So, that's why I think it was the main incentive. Also, the Chinese, they like the idea of the United States and China being the two powers that were having this you know major influence on these world events. They like being in that class.

James Green: In the one hand, they like the G2, the idea that the United States and China are shaping world events. On the other hand, sometimes they shirk from the responsibility of what the G2 means for them and what that role is.

Robert Einhorn: Exactly.

James Green: Do you think the previous many weeks and months that you spend in Beijing in '97, helped your personal relationship with your Chinese counterpart? Or with the Foreign Ministry in which that felt like, "Okay, we don't like the dentist, but at least we know what we're getting with Bob Einhorn."

Robert Einhorn: No, look. As I said, I was going to China six times a year. I was meeting them in New York, I was meeting them in Washington. This was a very intense series of interactions. I got to know these people very well. I think they had a love-hate relationship with me, maybe more hate than love, but they got to know me. And I hope they saw me as someone who would be a straight shooter with them, would not deceive them. If I said something was not possible for us, it really was not possible. If I said something was necessary for the United States, they would have understood that was necessary. And so, I think we had a good professional relationship.

James Green: And on that, you started dealing with the Chinese at a time when there wasn't a lot of expertise on nonproliferation. Then you spent many years kind of working with your counterparts. How would you say you saw that change in their ability to kind of talk about these issues and understand them? Maybe you kind of culminating in this UN Security Council Resolution and their importance on it.

Robert Einhorn: Yeah no, they made very rapid progress. And the professionalism of their diplomats in this area of nonproliferation. I mean, they had virtually no knowledge before '92. They were not members of the NPT, they didn't know their vocabulary, and all the rest. And they came very far, very fast through the '90s. They began to assign some of their most talented diplomats to this portfolio. And it showed. And it's continued to show. They still have top notch diplomats in this area.

James Green: Which isn't to say that every interaction with these diplomats is pleasant or necessarily friendly. But at least on the other side of the table, you have someone who's competent and is knowledgeable about the issues.

Robert Einhorn: That's right. And it's not to say that China's performance has always been stellar. I mean, there are many blemishes in their record, even until now. They have good export controls on the books they have a good procedure internally. The question is, how much do they put into enforcing their controls? How much resources did they put into establishing relationships between their central authorities in Beijing and their customs offices in the field and all of that?

And there have been relapses. And for countries like Pakistan, these are strategic relationships that China has that are difficult to interfere with. And so, you see lapses in their performance from time to time. But I think that the trendline has been positive from the beginning of the '90s until now. And part of it is because they've assigned very good personnel to this portfolio.

James Green: You had mentioned that your Chinese counterpart saw you as someone who was reliable, a straight shooter. Did you feel like when you were dealing with your Chinese Foreign Ministry counterparts, the same was true? That if they said, "Oh, China could never do this, or never agree to the statement.” They'd then change that the next day. How was that? I'm not asking you to name specific names of individuals, but the Chinese diplomats are sometimes put it in the awkward position of not knowing what the policy is, or not given a whole lot of latitude. Chinese negotiators are on an incredibly tight leash as you know. How did you find that kind of interaction?

Robert Einhorn: I think my Chinese interlocutors were reliable and predictable up to a point. I mean, they were operating under tight instructions. They didn't have perfect information. I'm sure within the U.S. bureaucracy, information was passed much more freely than information is passed within the Chinese bureaucracy.

So, my Foreign Ministry counterparts often didn't really know the story and were being given instructions that were very tight and constraining. But within those parameters, I think they tried to be upfront with me.

James Green: You’ve had a lot of experience then with a lot of different countries: North Koreans, Iranians, Russians. How would you put dealing with Chinese officials in this context with dealing with a range of other officials?

Robert Einhorn: Well, it's interesting. In many of these countries, because of the importance of arms control and nonproliferation has taken on, foreign ministries and governments tend to put some of their best people in these areas. So, when I've dealt with Iranians for example, I was involved in the negotiations on the U.S.-Iran Nuclear deal. We dealt with some very capable diplomats. Their foreign Minister, Javad Zarif is a very capable diplomat, educated in the United States. North Koreans, these were very talented North Koreans, as well. Soviets, Russians, the same. So, I've been fortunate to deal with a pretty high caliber of foreign diplomat.

James Green: Right. And I guess just stepping back, and you've spent many decades on this, where would you see China today on this issue of nonproliferation and on security? And I think there are some areas where U.S.-China interests align and others where they don't. How do you see it based on your time dealing with the PRC?

Robert Einhorn: Well, one of the difficulties in dealing with them on nonproliferation is that even though they had internalized the value of nonproliferation for their own security sometimes this value could be offset by other considerations. A strong bilateral relationship they didn't wanna interrupt, for example. So even though in principle, nonproliferation was a good thing for China, Pakistani security in the bilateral relationship were important enough that China was prepared to make certain exceptions for its friend.

But also, even though they had begun to absorb this norm, often we saw that their performance on nonproliferation waxed and waned depending on the state of the U.S.-China bilateral relationship. So, when in the run up to Jiang Zemin's visit to the White House, things were fine. And we were able to get important commitments from the Chinese. After a major arms sale to Taiwan, things became pretty bumpy.

After the accidental bombing of China's embassy in Belgrade, they discontinued any U.S.-China nonproliferation dialogue for sixteen months. So, that's been a challenge because of the ups and downs based on the bilateral relationship. But again, I think the trendline is positive. But recidivism is always around the corner.

James Green: Well Bob, thanks so much for all of your long years in service. This is an area where I really think when you went into this in the early '90s in dealing with China, the outcome was by no means certain as to where Chinese policy would end up. I think in a lot of areas of Chinese policy today, there's a lot of uncertainty about where China wants to go. But I think in this area, you've really been able to change their internal calculus which as you say, it's not 100% perfect record, but it has really made the U.S. more secure in not having to worry about a Chinese nonproliferation in a lot of different areas around the world.

Robert Einhorn: A take away I have from the years I've worked with the Chinese on this is that it's absolutely indispensable to be in constant contact with them. To engage with them. When you see a problem, raise it. When you see a problematic transfer that they're involved in, get information from the U.S. Intelligence Community that you can use with the Chinese. Raise it with them, press them on it. Threaten sanctions, if necessary. Impose sanctions, if necessary. But not just to punish the Chinese, to give yourself leverage to try to negotiate some kind of a better arrangement.

And this was I think the key to whatever success we had in the '90s. We were prepared to engage with them all the time. We were in their face all the time. They resented it; they didn't like it. But I think having to deal with this on this energized their bureaucracy. It became an issue that they had to deal with internally. They had to face up to this. And that's the only way we made progress.

James Green: Thanks again Bob, great to see you.

Robert Einhorn: Okay, thank you James.

James Green: Robert Einhorn, speaking with me from Washington, D.C. You’ve been listening to the U.S.-China Dialogue Podcast from Georgetown University. I’m your host, James Green.